Day 7 ~ Back to the States

As they say, all good things must come to an end. Even though we were looking forward to seeing Isaiah and Mallory again, it was really hard to leave Toronto. It had been such a fantastic week for us.

Road construction in front of our hotel made for a tight squeeze to leave town.

Bye-bye Royal York. *sniffles sadly*

Just outside Toronto, we noticed a traffic back-up going the other direction. The radio newscaster mentioned a semi was overturned and drivers were "taking a peek" to see what was going on. We giggled at his word choice. Here is the states, we use less polite terms like "rubber necking" or "gawking".

When you get bored in the car, it's always fun to take pictures of the handsome driver. 

Almost to customs...perhaps we should stop for a restroom... Nah, traffic doesn't look bad at all...

Yeah, what we didn't see was the parking lot of cars just over the hill waiting on the bridge to cross the border. Ugh. An hour. On a bridge. Fantastic. We really should have stopped. :/

Just a little advice:

OK - I think I got it. Won't be running on empty with this! Woot Woot!

Chicago. We meet again. :P

Well, hello there, handsome driver.  

Almost there...

Home safe and sound! 

Many, many thanks to my mom for staying with the kids for us!!! 

Love how Mallory drew Niagara Falls. :) (See top drawing.)

What a fantastic trip. I feel badly admitting it, but this trip was even better than our Honeymoon. We had so much fun enjoying eachother's company and seeing so many new things. 

The big question - where are we going next?! And WHEN?!

- becky

Day 1 ~ Driving to the Falls

We're off! These blog posts are going to be really fun for me to write!

We made the decision to drive for this vacation. It was actually a pretty easy decision to make - not only did we want to visit two cities, but plane tickets were really expensive. Passport cards are also cheaper than passport books. Something we should have budgeted for? Toll roads. Yikes, Illinois and Indiana. We spent $14.40 in tolls to get to Ontario. On the way home, we used the GPS to avoid tolls; the only unavoidable toll was the $3.50 at the border crossing. I should also mention that avoiding tolls did not add any additional driving time AND we ended up avoiding some traffic in Chicago. Bonus!

We woke up early and left at 6:00. We tried to wake the kids up, so they could wave to us from the driveway but they were snoozing pretty good. All we got was muffled good-byes from little faces mashed into pillows. You're welcome for not posting a picture of you in your jammies waving to us, Mom! Thanks for being a good sport and getting out of bed to see us off!

We made great progress until the Chicago rush hour parking lot. Geez. Lost an entire hour here.

LOOK! We're at the border!!! I was Kid-on-Christmas excited. Seriously.

Love the maple leaf to mark the highway on the GPS. 

Hey, we can go 70 on the 402! Oh wait. It's not MILES per hour; it's KILOMETERS per hour. 

Accounting for the time change, it took us 13-14 hours to make it to the Falls. I'm honestly amazed how well this picture turned out. Tim was driving about 100 on the 402. HA - km/h people. Settle down. (Ignore the previous picture; the speed limit had gone up over 70 km/h.)

We were extremely fortunate on this entire trip. We had rain only once - overnight - and we rolled into Niagara Falls AFTER a big rain storm. (Pretty cloud!)

This was our first peek at the Horseshoe Falls after dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. (Gotta love Groupon!)

After dinner #selfie :)

Next post - exploring Niagara Falls!

- becky

Have a Six Flags Day!

If I want to start a Book Blog, then I had best get better at this blogging thing.  Though, it is kind of nice to remember last summer while everything outside is covered in snow.

Just after our family vaca, we rode a charter bus down to Six Flags Great America with the youth group.  We had such a fantastic time, despite the very scary thunderstorms we drove through on the way home.  The worst part of the day was running through a deluge with kids, chicken nuggets, dipping sauce, and french fries back to the bus.  The bag ripped in the process and we were forced to eat our chicken nuggets without sweet and sour or barbeque sauce.  Boo.

But before the super scary thunderstorm, it really was a beautiful hot day.  As longs as you avoid the Fiddler's Fling.  #IthinkIneedtothrowup

This picture cracks me up.  I'm pretty sure we will not look nearly this calm when the kids start driving us around for real.

We had a great family day.  The kids were just at the right height to ride most of the rides that we wanted to!  Six Flags is super accommodating for Autistic children, too.  #bonus

My special treat, though, was seeing one of my students from the school year there with his family!  His mom and I exchanged numbers so we could meet up, and it was great to ride the Whizzer with Alex.  :)

- becky

It's a suh-hark!

Our first especially fun activity on vacation was a visit to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.  We have been to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago several times, and we always enjoy that.  We were pretty excited to check out something new.  Boy, were we impressed!  It was HUGE!  It was arranged in such a smart way, too.  There was a large open area in the center of the building, with different featured areas branching out like bicycle spokes.  

Camera batteries are all charged and ready to go!

Mommy = Chicken; Daddy = Brave.

You could touch a shark and a sting ray!  

3D movie! Isaiah and Mallory especially enjoyed this movie, with the big-not-so-scary shark named Smiley.

This girl is intense.

Daddy, let me show you the fish.  It's RIGHT THERE!

Nice purse.  What a good Daddy.

Yes, I was sitting on the floor, hanging with Isaiah. So much to see - even up above your heads!

Yikes!

OK.  These whale sharks were MASSIVE.  I've never seen several 10 feet long sharks in one tank before.

We're going to Florida next to swim in the Gulf of Mexico?!  Really?!

Next Stop - World of Coca-Cola (and probably some pictures of our super cool hotel)

- becky

Chicago 2011

After much debating, we decided to take our annual trip to Chicago between Christmas and New Years. The winter weather this year has been very different than usual, and this held true on our trip. Instead of snow, we had a lot of fog and misty rain. It didn't make for great pictures, but we still had lots of fun!

Don't you just love it when the Shedd Aquarium is super crowded?! Not.

Camera in hand!

Yes, I know. That is our son on the WRONG side of the railing.

Annual picture in the bean. Don't worry - Mallory is only sleeping. (We did wake her up to see the Macy's Christmas tree.)

That building is really tall!

Peek-a-boo!

I see you!

- becky